While we’ve witnessed many effective approaches to incorporating iPads successfully in the classroom, we’re struck by the common mistakes many schools are making with iPads, mistakes that are in some cases crippling the success of these initiatives. We’re sharing these common challenges with you, so your school doesn’t have to make them.

I think if you asked most teachers, especially in their first few years of teaching, what would make their lives easier, the single most common answer you would get, would be ready made lesson plans and materials.

My intention here isn’t to argue that games have learning value. Educators don’t need convincing of this. Rather, what these three ostensibly ‘non-educational’ games show us is that there are many more options out there than we realize; we just need to shift out perspectives on what learning looks like. Our students already have, we just need to catch up.

Nik Peachey's insight:

Interesting article on the use of mainstream computer games in education.

What if we asked our students about the type of work they would prefer to do while in class? It may reveal a lot about what choices they would make for assignments and activities and why they make these choices.

Nik Peachey's insight:

For me this highlights the negative impact of assessment on the real quality of learning. We need to focus more on assessing learning and collaboration skills rather than a tick list of information.

One night a few years ago, an inspired resident from the Korakati village made the adventurous journey back to Kolkata. His plan was simple: persuade Sugata Mitra, the visionary education researcher he’d heard about, to build a School in the Cloud in Korakati.

In business and in international development circles, much is made about the potential for 'learning from best practice'. Considerations of the use of educational technologies offer no exception to this impulse. That said, 'best practice' in the education sector is often a rather elusive concept (at best! some informed observers would say it is actually dangerous). The term 'good practice' may be more useful, for in many (if not most) cases and places, learning from and adapting 'good' practices

Nik Peachey's insight:

This is a really useful list of factors to avoid. Let's hope we've all learned from this.

In my goal to teach myself Mandarin Chinese, I stumbled across this brilliant new app designed for language learning and cultural exchange. Whereas other language learning apps aim to directly teach you a language through a curriculum and exercises, HelloTalk is designed to connect you with other language-learners around the world through translation-based software so that you can teach and help each other.

This guide is for anyone interested in teaching and learning languages, and thinking about teaching practices. It sets out a philosophy and proposes a frame of reference to aid teacher-thinking when designing mobile language learning in and beyond the classroom, informed by research conducted with teachers and learners in ESOL and EAP contexts.

A good public speaker takes their audience on a journey, leaving them feeling inspired and motivated. But structuring your speech to get your ideas across and keep your audience engaged all the way through is tricky. Try these eight storytelling techniques for a presentation that wows.

The educator should be familiar with and able to demonstrate metacognitive processes. “The most effective learners are metacognitive; that is, they are mindful of how they learn, set personal learning goals, regularly self-assess and adjust their performance, and use strategies to support their learning

Nik Peachey's insight:

This blog post is pretty much on the button. Something I've been talking about at various conferences for years now. Takes time to sink in.

Although language learning in 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs) has become a focus of recent research, little is known about the knowledge and skills teachers need to acquire to provide effective task-based instruction in 3D VWs and the type of teacher training that best prepares instructors for such an endeavor. This study employs a situated learning approach to teacher training and explores what online teaching skills emerge in the process of collaborative situated learning, how these skills develop, and whether collaborative situated learning is an effective method of training instructors to teach in 3D VWs.

Nik Peachey's insight:

This takes me back a bit. Glad to see that we haven't given up on Virtual Worlds.

CorrectiveFeedback enables you to automate a large part of the marking process and to also make the feedback you give more effective. It does this through using a number of marking ‘grids’ which you can customise to the needs of your students and the nature of your assignment.

This handbook is a product of the Digital Commonwealth project which sought to facilitate a creative response to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. However, the handbook is designed to be of use to a wider range of individuals, community groups and third sector organisations interested in using digital media (blogs, audio, video and social media) to tell their stories. Please use and share!

Nik Peachey's insight:

I really love this handbook. Has some really nice ideas and is really well structured.

One school in Pennsylvania is using open-source tools wherever possible to keep students close to the code behind the machines they use. This stance is opposite to the very restrictive policies of many schools, but could allow students more freedom to explore what makes devices work.

The aim of the DOAJ is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content.

In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it (Morehead 2012).

Remember reflection? That’s something we used to do occasionally before we all became addicted to checking our Web-enabled devices every few minutes for our much-needed digital data fixes. Prior to the mobile revolution, people could at times be seen staring off into space, just thinking. If you were to spot someone doing that today, you’d …

According to the American Library Association, by 2020, information on the Internet will be doubling every 15 minutes. Consuming information without taking the time to reflect is bad for the development of critical thinking skills. Without reflection, we become locked in a pattern of remembering and communicating information without taking the time to assess whether the information is true, utter garbage, or a valuable missing piece in a puzzle.[...]

Mark Smith

A journal is also a tool for self-discovery, an aid to concentration, a mirror for the soul, a place to generate and capture ideas, a safety valve for the emotions, a training ground for the writer, and a good friend and confidant. (op. cit.)

Such changes, Li and colleagues suggested while reviewing a number of related studies, are consistent with anatomical changes that can occur in the brain as a result of learning a second language, no matter the age of the learner, as they reported in a recent issue of Cortex.

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